fcb4

I am barbarian, sage, saint, bard, husband, father, grandfather. Bow my knee to only One, serve all, ruled by none.

[Live Action @LiveAction]

Sharlene was raped at age 15.

When she found out she was pregnant, she embraced the life of her son.

��My son did nothing wrong; he was just as much a victim of the rape as I was.”

[Brian Heywood - That Damn Mormon @bkheywood]

There are 5 Supreme Court Justices up for election this year. This is an unprecedented number. There are also some really good constitutionally focused candidates challenging this year which is also unprecedented.

If you have ever voted in WA state before you know that most often the Supreme Court justices have run unopposed.

So it is worth your time to get informed. Tell your neighbors. And vote.

One way to keep informed is to sign up for updates at

https://t.co/6Mq3DrCQR1

[fcb4 @fcb4]

@carmenjoyimes any recommendations on commentary from women on Judges 19-20?

[Ryan Burge 📊 @ryanburge]

This is share of each religious group that agrees with all four statements:

Favor same sex marriage.
Acceptance of transgender and homosexuality has been good for society.
Abortion should be legal in all cases.

Even among the non-religious, it's just 53%.

[InteractivePolls @IAPolls2022]

GALLUP POLL: 42% of men aged 18-29 now say religion is "very important" in their lives — a sharp jump from just 28% in 2022-2023.

Monthly religious attendance among young men has climbed to 40% (up from 33%), the highest level in over a decade.

https://t.co/3lMO2Y6kFm

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Mark Zuckerberg just described the death of human connection on the internet and no one flinched.

One sentence. Fifteen years of erosion in twelve words.

Mark Zuckerberg: “Social media started out as people primarily interacting with their friends. And now… at least half of the content is basically people interacting with creators.”

You used to open your phone to see what your friends were doing.

Now you open it to watch strangers.

You did not choose this. The algorithm chose it for you.

It tested your friends against optimized strangers.

Your friends lost. Every time.

A stranger with better lighting, better timing, and a better hook held your attention three seconds longer than someone who loves you.

So the algorithm buried your best friend’s wedding photos under a cooking video from someone in Dubai you have never met.

And you watched the cooking video.

That was the first replacement. Friends for strangers. You barely noticed.

The second one is already underway.

If the algorithm already proved strangers outperform your real relationships, and AI can now build a stranger more engaging than any human alive, the math finishes itself.

The AI does not have a bad week. It does not post something careless and lose the algorithm’s favor. It does not burn out.

Every word calibrated.

Every frame tuned.

Every pause placed at the exact interval that keeps your thumb from moving.

A human creator competing against that is carving stone tablets in a world that just built the printing press.

The economics are not even close.

A person needs rent, sleep, and motivation.

The machine needs electricity.

When the cost of generating perfect content hits zero, the feed fills with faces that do not exist.

Voices that feel familiar.

Opinions that mirror yours just enough to feel like trust.

Personalities built from scratch to feel like someone you have known for years.

You will not know when the switch happens.

That is the point.

The feed does not care whether the thing holding your attention has a pulse. It cares whether you stay.

And a machine that knows your patterns better than you know yourself will always keep you longer than a person ever could.

This is not a warning. Half of it already happened.

You lost your friends to strangers and did not notice.

You will lose the strangers to machines and call them friends.

Somewhere in a different app, in a different tab, in a room you are sitting in right now, someone who actually knows you is living a moment you will never see.

Not because they stopped sharing it.

Because you stopped being where it was.

[fcb4 @fcb4]

Is this ai https://t.co/Laz0v1cjSE

[fcb4 @fcb4]

When the street violence prevents you from getting home.

[The Protestant Philosopher @ProtPhilosopher]

I noticed several errors in Dr. Taylor Marshall's letter to Protestants. So I offer a corrected version below, addressed to Catholics.

Dear Catholics,

Your Bible contains 7 non-canonical books, added by the Council of Trent in 1546 over the objections of your own best bible scholar.

Marshall says Jerome "changed his mind" about the deuterocanonical books around 402 AD in obedience to Pope Damasus. I've read Jerome's prefaces. This doesn't hold up.

Damasus died in 384. Jerome wrote his famous Prologus Galeatus in 391. It excluded the deuterocanonicals as part of the canon. He labels these books as apocrypha. That's 7 years after Damasus was gone. That's not obedience to a living pope.

The quote Marshall uses from Against Rufinus, which reads "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches?", isn't about the canon. It's about Jerome's decision to translate from the Hebrew instead of the Septuagint. Rufinus attacked him for it. Jerome defended himself. In context, he's talking about translation method, not about which books belong in the Bible.

And Jerome didn't stop his take. I've quoted these before, but here he is for the next 24 years of his life:

391: "Whatever is outside of these is set aside among the apocrypha."

398: The Church reads Tobit and the Maccabees "not for the authoritative confirmation of ecclesiastical doctrines."

405: Tobit is excluded from "the catalogue of Divine Scriptures." Judith is "considered among the apocrypha."

406: Cites the Book of Wisdom with "if one wishes to accept this book."

415: Still distinguishing Wisdom ("lest you gainsay this volume") from Ecclesiastes ("about which there can be no doubt"). This is one of his last works.

Gallagher, a top scholar on Jerome on the canon, explains, "All of our evidence indicates that he always considered them outside the canon."

Jerome never retracted. He never published a revised list. Never wrote "I was wrong." He translated Tobit and Judith under pressure, finished each in a single day, and attached prefaces denying them canonical status. That's not submission. That's a scholar doing what he's told while making sure everyone knows what he thinks.

Dear Catholics, please drop the fan fiction that Jerome submitted to Rome on the canon.

He held the same position from 391 until he died in 420. And Trent overruled him 15 centuries later by a vote of 24(Y)-15(N)-16(A). It passed by 44%. Not exactly a passing grade. Surely not one I'd write letters to Protestants about.

[Heidi 🏖 🐬💙🍹🌊 @Brodiesmom68]

I haven’t laughed this hard in so long.
Make sure you have your pee pad on.
I have tears running down my leg. 😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣

[fcb4 @fcb4]

Not every Susanna is rescued by a Daniel and not every prayer is answered in the way that this story unfolds. But we can do what we can to equip, empower and stand with those who can break these personal and generational cycles of abuse and addiction. https://t.co/GlIVV993RP

[fcb4 @fcb4]

Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy: https://t.co/H9BrFwy0k1

[fcb4 @fcb4]

Didn’t expect to wake up to this today.

[fcb4 @fcb4]

Chores

[fcb4 @fcb4]

@jasonkovacs Jason as a pastor nearing 35 years, I wanted to thank you for your kind and wise voice in all of this sabbatical debate.

[fcb4 @fcb4]

@kxly4news

[NBC Olympics & Paralympics @NBCOlympics]

The heartfelt comeback story of Alysa Liu's skating career. ❤️#WinterOlympics

[fcb4 @fcb4]

This is the zone where skill and passion meet. Absolute euphoria.